Psalms for Quarantine: Psalm 131

Psalm 131: A Song of Ascents. Of David.

1 O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;
    my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
    too great and too marvelous for me.
2 But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
    like a weaned child with its mother;
    like a weaned child is my soul within me.

3 O Israel, hope in the Lord
    from this time forth and forevermore.

Lord, I do not understand this thing. I do not understand any of it. This virus, the mutation and the spread, how some people are barely affected while others are fighting for their lives. I do not understand the science behind the development of diagnostic testing, vaccinations, and anti-virals, or the process of clinical trials. (That there are people whose job it is to develop life-saving measures such as these is almost beyond my comprehension. To have that weighing on my shoulders, I think, is a thing I could not bear.) Lately, I don’t even understand the news. What I am to be afraid of and what need I not fear? The grocery store? My parents? The sidewalks in my neighborhood? My husband when he comes home from working at the hospital? What’s the worser scenario, a tanking economy or depleted health care systems? (I don’t envy the people whose job it is to grapple with that question.)

Lord I do not understand this thing, nor have You asked me to. What I do understand is Your immense love for me. As much as a person can understand the self-sacrificing love of the God of the universe for a poor wretch like myself. Ok, maybe I don’t understand Your love for me. But You have not asked me to understand that either, only to trust it. To trust that though there will be wars or famines or plagues, they will not prevent Your love from sustaining me through and rescuing me from this fallen world. Some day this world and all it’s catastrophes will be no more, and the thing that will remain is You, and the Home You have prepared, and by grace may I be there too.

And so, in the spirit of trust, and in the spirit of being lost in a sea of not-understanding, I will sit myself down on Your lap and lay my head and against Your heart and let You be in charge. I will not clamor or gripe or make demands, but simply be quiet, and rest, and trust.

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Psalms for Quarantine: Psalm 133

Psalm 133: A Song of Ascents. Of David.

1 Behold, how good and pleasant it is
when brothers dwell in unity!
2 It is like the precious oil on the head,
running down on the beard,
on the beard of Aaron,
running down on the collar of his robes!
3 It is like the dew of Hermon,
which falls on the mountains of Zion!
For there the Lord has commanded the blessing,
life forevermore.

I woke this morning to the voices of my older two children coming through the baby monitor that sits on my night stand. This is usually the sound that wakes me up, unless by some act of Providence they sleep past 6:00 am, in which case it’s my husband’s alarm. Today it was the children. I listened as they exchanged a few lines of the excited sort of conversation children carry on in the mornings when they realize the time for sleep is over and they have an entire day of play ahead of them. Once I was assured that they were happily playing I turned off the baby monitor to get a few more minutes of sleep.

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Psalms for Quarantine: Psalm 130

Psalm 130: A Song of Ascents.

1 Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord!
2 O Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my pleas for mercy!

3 If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
O Lord, who could stand?
4 But with you there is forgiveness,
that you may be feared.

5 I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
6 my soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen for the morning,
more than watchmen for the morning.

7 O Israel, hope in the Lord!
For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
and with him is plentiful redemption.
8 And he will redeem Israel
from all his iniquities.

I remember many nights as a child (and, let’s be honest, as an adult) laying awake in my bed waiting for a thunderstorm to pass. Some people enjoy a good summer storm, but I am not one of them. Each flash of lightning and crash of thunder sends new waves of terror through my body. The minutes drag by as I wait for the dawn that always seems to drive the storms away. It’s nights like these, kept awake by a storm, or a child who won’t sleep, or by my own anxiety, that call to mind verse 6 of this Psalm:

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